Trap plans to revert to type

Having dipped his toe in some tactical experimentation in Belgrade, it will hardly come as the shock of the new season to learn that Giovanni Trapattoni will be reverting to first principles for Ireland’s opening World Cup qualifier in Kazakhstan next month.

In short, Wednesday night’s flirtation with 4-5-1/4-3-3 will be parked for the competitive challenge four weeks tomorrow, to be replaced by an altogether more familiar formation.

“The game against Serbia was very, very useful for us in reviewing our tactics,” the manager said yesterday. “The players had difficulty adapting to the system so I had to put them back in their normal positions. James McClean in the centre, for example. It was not his position and it didn’t work. So we went back to 4-4-2. Maybe for the friendly against Oman inn London (after the game in Kazakhstan) we can try again. But absolutely not in qualifying. The players need time, weeks, months, to learn this system. When I was a manager in Germany, Portugal and Italy, we needed a month of training to learn this system.